The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen: A Review of Tiamat’s Wrath

Minor spoilers ahead (but only for those who haven’t read the previous books in the series).

Discussion:

Tiamat’s Wrath picks up a few years after the end of Persepolis Rising. I promise it really only is “a few” years this time. “Several,” at the very, very most. Anyway, the book picks up with everyone more or less where we left them. Captain James Holden is enjoying the hospitality of High-Consul Duarte and the rest of the Rocinante’s crew, along with many others, is off fighting the good fight while Laconia’s boot remains firmly pressed against the Milky Way’s collective neck.

As for the aforementioned queens…

While men like High-Consul Duarte, Marco Inaros, and—I say this with love—Holden have strutted and preened across the galactic stage, it’s the women of The Expanse who have driven the story and, within the story, the Milky Way forward toward what’s shaping up to be one hell of a conclusion.

Although Holden and Detective Miller are the primary narrators of Leviathan Wakes, Julie Mao’s voice is the first voice we hear. (And part of me wonders if it will be the last.) At any rate, the prologue for book one is set in Julie’s POV, and her actions drive Miller’s, and then Holden’s, and then the entire solar system’s actions.

I suppose that there’s an argument to be made for Julie’s actions in Leviathan Wakes being controlled by the protomolecule, but that weakens when recalling that prologue. If we know one true thing about Julie Mao, a thing that isn’t part of Miller’s idealized vision of her or Holden’s somewhat patronizing one, it’s that she’s a fighter. She fights off the assholes who commandeer her ship. She fights for her life trapped in that tiny, little locker. And, even though her last moments of consciousness are filtered through Miller’s POV, I do believe that those are her last moments of consciousness and it is her choice, her strength, that saves Earth from Eros.

I tend to think of this series as one long, gigantic, galactic-spanning game of chess, and if you know anything about chess, you know which piece is the most powerful on the board. (If you know nothing about chess, and can’t parse subtext, I’ll just go ahead and tell you: It’s the queen.) Sure, the king is important. In fact, this book shows, though I won’t say how, that the game is over if the king falls. However, if, or until, that happens, the queen is a player’s strongest, most versatile piece. Not to mention that a pawn that reaches the opposing player’s side of the board can be promoted to queen, making it possible to have more than one on the board.

The same rules seem to apply to humanity in this series. While some players, like Chrisjen Avarsarala, start out making queen-level moves, there are others who start as pawns. Take Bobbie Draper and her eventual promotion(s). From her first appearance in book two, as a lowly Martian ground-pounder, to her position at the start of book nine, as captain of the flagship and the tip of the spear for the resistance against High-Consul Duarte and Laconia, she makes quite the meteoric—#sorrynotsorry—rise. And Draper’s only one of a dozen examples I could name of female characters who seem like bit players stepping into the limelight and taking on larger, or more important, roles than the supposed leads.

My point? Well, I’ve written a lot of English papers in my day, and I think I would have to focus on the connection between women, birth, and creation. How, despite of years and years of oppression, women have always found the strength to keep on going. And we haven’t just survived; some of us have thrived, and I can only hope more and more will thrive as sexism and its threats, both obvious and nefarious, are crushed beneath the inexorable progress of time.

I’m not saying that the writers are making a political statement, but I’m not not saying they’re making a political statement. Women have seen a lot of setbacks and made a lot of strides while this series was being written, and authors don’t live in a vacuum. Especially in this day and age, when it’s virtually impossible for a writer to pull a Dickinson or a Salinger. Where interaction between a writer and their readers is easier and, in most cases, expected. In a genre that is still in the process of confronting the most backward thinkers among its readers and writers, and in a series with so much deliberate diversity, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say they’re making a statement with so many badass women in so many pivotal roles.

Back to the book. Tiamat’s Wrath pulls a turn-and-brake-at-super-high-g maneuver worthy of Alex Kamal at the top of his game. Persepolis Rising makes quite the Big Bad out of Duarte and his myriad followers, but Tiamat’s Wrath reminds us that humanity, even at its worst and/or most oppressive, is nothing when compared to the makers of the protomolecule. In Ancient Babylon, Tiamat was a goddess, a creator that somehow turned into the embodiment of primordial chaos. That makes Tiamat—Miss Tiamat, if you’re nasty—a good a name as any for the source of the protomolecule, the gates, and all the other wacky, time-eating, puke-zombie-monster-making things that wiped out the last inhabitants of our galaxy. And Miss Tiamat is, as the title of the books suggests, pissed.

You would be too, if a bunch of monkeys broke into your house and kept poking at you. In The Expanse series, humanity has done nothing but prod and jab at Miss Tiamat since her discovery (because we are the Curious George of monkeys) and she’s done. She’s tried shooing us away, tried tossing us outside and locking the door behind her. Hell, she’s even smacked us on the nose a time or two, but not only are we Georges. No, we’re stupid and stubborn and violent to boot, and she could not be more over it.

Which is not to say that High-Consul Duarte’s empire isn’t still going to be a pain in the ass. But, by the end of TW, it’s no longer humanity’s greatest threat. Nor was it ever, really. We just forgot about Miss Tiamat in our haste to fight one another for control over the most mudballs or the shiniest toys. This whole time, though, we’ve been fighting in her yard, over her toys, and as I said before: SHE. IS. DONE.

Of that, there is no question by the end of book eight. As for who is, or is not, there when the dust settles at the end of Tiamat’s Wrath…

In my review of Persepolis Rising, I mentioned there being a “trapped in amber” sense to the characters and the story between books, but, with Tiamat’s Wrath, the amber has melted and the weight of so many years—of so many pages, of so many moments shared with characters both beloved and despised—presses down on the narrative and the reader. I cried more than once reading Tiamat’s Wrath. In grief. In joy. Sometimes in the mingling thereof. Truly, the stakes in this book are as high as they’ve always been. Higher, even, given all that these characters—and these writers—have been through. The only thing left, aside from a possible novella, is book nine: our last entry into The Expanse, the precipice over which this series will fly or fall.

In Conclusion: The pieces are set, the endgame is in sight, humanity’s fate has seldom seen a worse threat, and I can’t remember the last time I was this excited for a finale.

Watch out for that first line, though. It’s a doozy.

Tiamat’s Wrath releases March 26, 2019.

Book Nine doesn’t have a title or a release date yet, but I do want to mention that we are considering starting a re-read/read-along of The Expanse series in its entirety, including the novellas. By my count, that’s about 4,800 pages of delicious sf goodness. Whether you’re rereading the books with me, coming to them for the first time, or are simply looking for a refresher, all will be welcome!